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From orange picking to a Whataburger employee to a business teacher, hard work is a staple of Torres’ life. Her academic journey is one of dedication, novelty seeking, and time management.
Since she was 13, Torres picked oranges with her family on Saturdays and Sundays while simultaneously going to school during the week.
“My biggest challenge is that I never had the privilege of only focusing on my academics,” Torres said. “When I was 17, I decided that I didn’t want that for me, that I’m not somebody who wants to work in hard labor.”
Torres holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s in business administration. Her initial goal was to become an accountant, so she became a Lone Star National Bank auditor. It was not until one of the state auditors came to audit the bank that Torres realized that teaching was a skill of hers.
“It was after I got out of school that I wanted to be a teacher,” Torres said. “I did accounting as an auditor for seven years, and while there, someone told me I’d be good as a teacher. So, I said, ‘Let me give it a shot.’”
Torres hesitated to apply her accounting skills to teaching because she thought no school offered business classes besides business information management. Still, to her surprise, some schools provided marketing, management, and accounting positions.
Torres now works as a BIM teacher, an entrepreneurship practicum instructor, and a dual enrollment business instructor at Jimmy Carter Early College High School. She said her past taught her about hard work and that there is no bad job if it pays the bills and you give it your all.
“I like to say business is one of the best careers you can enter,” Torres said. “It’s so vast. There are endless possibilities.” “Every business out there needs an accountant, a manager, and people who studied business. And if you want to be a teacher, that’s also possible. Just like me.”